Now that we had a donor, the waiting game began again.

Bashert is not the most patient person in the best of times. She hates to wait. Oh, does she hate to wait.

Once we traveled to North Carolina to see the Highland Games that are held on top of Grandfather Mountain – a real mountain, mind you. The road up is quite steep and twisty, so the organization holding the event had arranged for bus ferries up and down the mountain. When we were through with our visit to the games, we walked out and faced a half mile long line to board the bus down the mountain. I sighed and accepted the slow progression of shuffling forward foot by foot, but Bashert? Oh, no, this would not do.

Before I knew it we were out of line and meandering up toward the loading zone. As we got to the front, Bashert began conversing with a family as if she were picking up a conversation just left off. The family chatted back, as comfortable with this relationship as Bashert seemed to be. Now, knowing that Bashert had ties to the Scottish game community through her bagpipes playing days, I thought this may be a family she knew. We continued the conversation and eased our way on to the next bus, probably a good thirty minutes before we would have had we stayed in line.

As we took our seats, I turned to ask Bashert who those people were. She looked me straight in the eye and said, “I have no idea.” I guess I must have blanched because she then added with a big smile, “But we’re on the bus aren’t we?”

Like I said, she hates to wait. So waiting for something pretty much totally out of her control, say the surge of ovulation, was excruciating torture. She thinks I didn’t notice, but I think she must have tested every single day that month in hopes that she could will it to happen on her schedule.

The Friday morning it actually did happened you would have thought Ed McMahon rang our doorbell. Bashert woke me from a sound sleep (two jobs remember?) shouting, “I’m surging, I’m surging!” and dancing around the bathroom holding the test stick. After realizing what was happening and it wasn’t just a panic attack about a bug in the bathroom again, my heart kind of stopped. The same terrified and joyous feeling I had when we chose the donor came over me. This was it; the ball was really rolling.

We shook ourselves out our happy stupor and managed to call the clinic. Our joy was short-lived.  The call to the clinic revealed that once “the surge” began, we had to wait 24 hours for the optimal time to perform the insemination. That meant 24 hours more of anxious waiting and a Saturday appointment. Bashert was not a happy camper.

I was privy to some of the anxiety producing situations Bashert was going through, but I didn’t know the full extent until much later – some not until she began to write her story – so, her extra heightened state of distress about having the insemination on a Saturday confused me. Being upset about the wait I could understand, but I just couldn’t see the big deal about Saturday. I thought the timing was great since I wouldn’t have to call into work and we could spend the whole day together.

Slow dawning came about when she finally told me that because the insemination would be done outside of a regular office day, the on-call doctor would do the procedure. The on call doctor that weekend: Dr. Lizardo.